O'Neill Leads Lady Jackets to Shutout Over BC

Jillian O'Neill hitting a forehand.

After losing to # 24 ranked Maryland 3-4 on Friday, April 1st, the Georgia Tech Women's Tennis team needed a confidence booster to avenge their heartbreaking ACC loss to the Terrapins.  Beating Boston College two days later by a dominating 7-0 score definitely helped bring back some confidence to Coach Shelton and his players.

"This is exactly the type of day we were looking for today," head coach Bryan Shelton said. "We wanted to see how we would respond after losing to Maryland on Friday. It was nice for our team to come out, and bring an energy and competitiveness. It's easy after you lose a tough match to feel sorry for yourself. There's just no time, or opponent, where we can go out there and feel sorry for ourselves. I was glad to see our team rise to the occasion and come out ready to play today." 


The Jackets started the day on a positive note by winning the doubles point against BC.  The Eagles # 2 duo of Olga Khmylev and Alex Kelleher did defeat Tech's Elizabeth Kilborn and Lynn Blau, but lines 1 and 3 were able to pull of victories over their opponents.  Caroline Lilley and Jillian O'Neill prevailed with a 8-4 win, while Sasha Krupina and Muriel Wacker also won by an identical score.  

All the Lady Jackets came out on top in their singles matches.  Jillian O'Neill battled back after losing the first set 6-3 to easily take the next two 6-0, 6-1 over BC's # 1 Alex Kelleher, # 2 Caroline Lilley won in a third set tiebreaker over Erina Kikuchi (which is played instead of the 3rd set since Tech had already defeated Boston College as a team), and freshman Muriel Wacker pulled out a third set tiebreaker win over Katharine Attwell at seed 6.

Shelton and his team will travel back to North Carolina this weekend to face # 3 ranked UNC on Saturday, April 9th in Chapel Hill.  They will then drive to Durham to take on the Lady Blue Devils of Duke on Sunday, April 10th.